U2 frontman Bono has spoken out on the criticism he and his band have faced over recent months, after protests were held in the wake of allegations they had been expoiting a tax shelter in the Netherlands.
In a revealing interview with the Guardian newspaper, Bono shrugged off the complaints, saying: “What bothered me was it’s like you’re hiding your money in some tax haven and people think of the Cayman Islands and you’re campaigning for Africa and transparency, of course that looked like hypocrisy. People whom I’ve annoyed, people who wished us to fail, they finally got what they thought must have been there in the first place. It was a hook to hang me on. ‘We got him!’ You could, if you wanted, get, y’know, it could get you going. You look at it and say, ‘Well what have you done?'”
He also commented on the personal critisism he often faces from the public: “I can be annoying,” he said. “I have a kind of annoying gene. As Delmore Schwartz said, ‘Ego is always at the wheel.’ It’s just with rock stars, it’s more obvious. The need to be loved and admired doesn’t come from a particularly pretty place. But people tend to do a lot of great things with it. Ego, yes, but the ego that’s in everything human beings are capable of. Without ego, things would be so dull.”
U2 are currently on a huge world tour in support of new album ‘No Line On The Horizon’, and have recently completed three sold out dates at Dublin’s Croke Park. The tour will take them to the USA in September.
Below: Musician and activist Bono accepts the 2005 TED Prize with a riveting talk, arguing that aid to Africa isn’t just another celebrity cause; it’s a global emergency.
This guy is a slime ball tax dodger. Never trust someone who’s more interested in cleaning up someone else’s back yard before he cleans up his own. And his band’s latest album is a pile of doo-doo and sank off the charts like a stone. Buh-bye, Bozo!